


How Sweet the Sound

by LeggyStarscream



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Coping, False Pregnancy, M/M, Nightmares, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-18 13:29:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2350073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeggyStarscream/pseuds/LeggyStarscream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Breakdown's death, Knockout notices an unexpected result during one of his self-scans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_My Lord, I regret to inform you-_

_Yes, Dreadwing?_

_The mission… was a failure. Airachnid remains online._

_And Breakdown? I'm surprised he's not with you. He **promised** to help me buff later an-_

_I… I'm sorry, Knockout._

Knockout flung himself up right in his berth, engine and spark racing at the memory. The memory was raw, still recent - it hadn't even been an Earth month since Dreadwing had returned with the news. Knockout, at this stage, knew that recharge was not going to take him again, so he got himself out of berth and meandered over to the medical bay, trying his damnedest to keep his processor from wandering.

It was still off-shift hours, and the med bay was quiet - empty all except for the few Eradicons on medical berths. Even they were deep in recharge. Knockout called up the main viewscreen, and began reviewing his current task list.

One Eradicon needed a new leg forged - Knockout started with that. It was fairly involved work - something that would keep his mind distracted - and it also let him work alone. Knockout began the process - since the Eradicons had identical frames, the mold itself was as familiar to him as his own buzz saw. As the outer armor began cooling in the mold, Knockout turned to the large table in the middle of the room.

"Sweetspark, can you hand me the ol-" Knockout caught himself mid-sentence as the words caught in his vocalizer. He turned, half expecting to see Breakdown standing there, and Knockout realized that he had stuck his arm out without thinking. Knockout froze, but his outstretched arm fell slowly back down to his side, and his helm drooped down onto the table.  
The memories came rushing in as the dam burst, and Knockout tried, with every ounce of effort he could manage to keep his keening as quiet as possible.

The regular question ran through his head - why? It was a routine operation. Why had Airachnid managed to get away? Why hadn't he asked to do along? Why hadn't Breakdown freed Dreadwing - as Dreadwing reported, Breakdown had gone after Airachnid alone after Dreadwing was pinned to a tree.

Just… why?

Knockout had turned his back on the notion of Primus long ago - even with the empirical evidence for the existence of Unicron, the idea of an all-powerful, all-good Primus was just…

But he had to believe. Knockout had found himself looking down more, smiling sadly at the ground. Most of the time, he caught himself doing it without thinking. But, it was hard to imagine Breakdown's spark rejoining the Well when he went offline so far, far away from Cybertron. But he had to.

Breakdown had to be happy. The alternative was unbearable.

Knockout forced himself back up and got back to work. The task carried him all the way through to the start of the first shift - he was technically now on-duty. An internal alarm alerted him that his fuel tank was getting low; Knockout had found the emptiness of his tank more of a comfort than he cared to admit - fuel was harder to put back these days.

He started wandering out of the med bay when he clanged his pede against the main surgical berth. A string of binary profanity flew out of his vocalizer, and Knockout grabbed for the pede with both hands.

Something surged across his spark, and he lost his balance.

Knockout shook his helm as he picked himself up off of the floor.

"That was a new one," he muttered to himself, optics catching on the nearby medical scanner. A subconscious thread informed him that he hadn't scanned himself for injuries since the fight over the relic in the subway, and Knockout shrugged.

"Better safe than sorry…" he said as he plugged the system into himself.

At the end of the scan, he put the cords back - hanging loosely off of the side of the scanner, and pulled the scanner's view screen up to take a look at his results. He quickly glanced over the results, checking for any unusual outputs.

Frame - normal (albeit still scratched up and unbuffed).  
Nervous system - normal.  
Fuel system - normal (yes, scanner, low on fuel; this is not news).  
T-cog - normal.  
Spark chamber -

No, that couldn't be right. Knockout reset his optics, hard, waiting for the full suite of diagnostics to take place before looking at the results again.

Spark chamber - carrying.

Knockout stood there, staring, until his systems pinged him again about refueling again.


	2. Chapter 2

Knockout had taken to whistling. Sure, he received odd looks from the rest of the crew, but at this point? They could all go slag themselves for all he cared.

He was carrying. He was going to have Breakdown's child.

Breakdown's spark, in some small way, was going to continue glowing.

As medic, Knockout had already formed an expected timetable for the carrying process. Every frame was different - and different frame types responded to carrying in vastly different ways. His frame - sparked as a Seeker, now a high-performance grounder - showed the effects of carrying faster than any other frame type. He was still a few Earth days shy of the average, according to his databanks, but he was due to show the first visible signs of carrying soon. The first changes were hard to notice, mind, but any medic worth his metal could spot them at a glance.

Knockout found himself in berth after his shift, tapping on his plating delicately with a claw, impatiently hoping that it would spur the changes onward.

"Never does any good to try to force these things," he mumbled as his optics offlined and he fell into recharge. "Good night, little one."

* * *

The time passed - Knockout wasn't sure whether it was too fast or too slow. Knockout knew that he was likely due for another scan, but he had wanted to wait until his frame had begun to show the signs.

That his frame hadn't begun to respond was beginning to nettle in the back of his processor, and Knockout began actively avoiding even looking at the scanner. Every frame was different, yes, but all Cybertronians were forged from the same basic model and even with the frame reformat-

Knockout paused his train of thought - a frame reformat, on occasion, would delay the start of the start of the first carrying cycle, occasionally to the point where a carrier would need to have a medic hardline in to jump start the carrier protocols.

It was mid-shift and most of the crew was off refueling. Knockout's optics fell on the medical scanner again.

If his carrier protocols were delayed due to the reformat, the advice he'd give himself, as his medic, would be to have another look around and then manually enable the protocols.

"Frag it all," he whispered, and grabbed the scanner cables, plugged them in, and rotated the view screen until he could see it from the examination berth.

His basic vitals quickly popped up on screen - Knockout ignored most of them, jumping straight to his spark readout.

Knockout nearly felt it extinguish on the spot. Fighting back against the emotion, he reset his optics again, praying to Primus for the first time since he had decided to join the Decepticons.

The information on the screen remained unchanged.

Knockout, servos trembling, removed the medical cables, and sent a comm to the Eradicon who was now serving under him - simply _< <relieving self from duty under protocol 41A5.F1>>_.

Knockout walked down the hallways of the Nemesis back to his berth, claws almost digging into the plating over his spark chamber. He made it back without encountering any other mechs, and the door felt like it slid open slower than he remembered. The moment his berth door closed behind him, he fell to the floor, slamming it with his fists, a thousand curses flying out from his processor.

He was an idiot - the old reading, still burnt into his memory banks, was well within the normal parameters for mechs under a lot of stress. The universe, Primus, the Thirteen, whoever was in charge out there was a devil and deserved to be offlined in the most painful ways imaginable.

Breakdown was a horrid mech - how could he leave like that? They had just decided that they wanted to try to spark - it was unfair. It was so incredibly unfair.

Knockout remained in his quarters for the next three shifts, refusing entry to anyone - even Megatron. It was his right, under the cited protocol, to confine himself until he was ready for active duty again. At the end of the third shift, Soundwave sent him a comm - just an image of an energon cube sitting on the other side of the berth door. No words, no emotional markers, just the image.

Knockout slowly approached the door, his fuel indicator finally displaying just how empty his tank was. The sound of the door opening was enough to startle him, even when he had pressed the switch himself. As pictured, there was an energon cube sitting on the floor. Knockout grabbed it, and shut the door quickly as he heard footsteps approaching.

The energon felt heavy in his tank, even with how slowly Knockout sipped at the cube. He sat on the berth, one hand holding the cube, the other slowly tracing circles on the screen of a datapad off of the bedside table.

His cube half empty, Knockout took a deep ventilation cycle before powering the data pad on.

The contents were just old records - data, pictures, memories, recordings. The moment he heard the news, Knockout had copied everything he remembered about Breakdown onto the data pad.

Active memories had tendencies to both corrupt and fade - data pads were more static, more stable. Knockout hadn't been able to bring himself to switch the data pad on until now.

He plugged his main data feed into the data pad, and let himself get lost in his memories. The good times - how they met on the frontlines, the way Breakdown first propositioned him, the first time they fell into berth together. Some of the bad - Breakdown's explosive temper and minor jealous streaks coupled with his own massive jealous streak had led to some huge fights before they left Cybertron. But they had always been able to talk things over in the end - usually after a long, hard frag.

A particular file came up. Knockout's spark skipped a beat as he recognized it as the first time Breakdown had said "I love you."

He mouthed the words back at the memory, before turning the datapad connection off and falling backwards into his berth, suddenly exhausted.

His processor drifted restlessly that night. Visions of Airachnid's helm tormented him, mocking him and Breakdown's ineptitude.

Normally, in this dream, he found himself cowering, curling up until he woke up. This time, however, he found his legs, and stood up, staring her right in the optics.

"Not today, spiderglitch," he said, pulling out his hammer and slamming it right into the side of her helm.

It couldn't be his hammer - he didn't have a hammer. Knockout turned around, and saw a very familiar blue mech, standing behind him, hammer transforming back into his hand and a smile across his faceplates as Breakdown looked down and Knockout. Knockout through his frame at Breakdown, but Breakdown was just out of reach, and a little transparent.

Knockout stood there, searching for the words to say, as he watched the image of Breakdown fade into nothing except for a spark - the same yellow as Breakdown's, free floating and flying. Breakdown's spark flew at Knockout, swirling around the red mech, before pausing his above his spark chamber. The spark flared briefly and then flew off.

Knockout's optics onlined as the dream faded. On hand clutched to his spark chamber, Knockout sat up in berth, optics fixed on the floor. He kissed two fingers, pointing them at the ground.

"Goodbye, Breakdown. See you again, when all are one."


End file.
